“Six strikes” copyright enforcement postponed until 2013

CCI official says ISPs want to be sure "I's are dotted and T's crossed."

The Center for Copyright Information, which help ISPs punish Internet copyright infringers by administering a "six strikes" warning system, was scheduled to start up the operation before the end of this year.

But today CCI announced that the rollout will be delayed at least a few months, until "early 2013." The reason given: damage from Hurricane Sandy, "which affected our testing schedules."

Our goal has always been to implement the program in a manner that educates consumers about copyright and peer-to-peer networks, encourages the use of legal alternatives, safeguards customer privacy, and provides an easy-to-use independent review program for consumers to challenge alerts they believe they’ve received in error.

We need to be sure that all of our "I"s are dotted and "T"s crossed before any company begins sending alerts, and we know that those who are following our progress will agree.

The six-strikes system involves using a third-party service, MarkMonitor, to locate user accounts that are trading copyrighted files online. Then it's up to the Internet service providers to get in touch with those users through an escalating system of warnings and ultimately punishments such as throttled speeds.

Earlier this month, two of the ISPs that will be involved with the system—Verizon and Time Warner—discussed the logistics of integrating the new system into their services by the end of 2012.

They're building tools to throttle their users, but will continue to charge them the same rate for the advertised speeds that consumers purchased. This is completely the wrong approach because those tools will inevitably be repurposed for other means.

I'm curious if this could be challenged at a discrimination level. Multiple corporations acting together to deny equal access to services or something. I don't believe that Internet Access is a right, simply that barring groups of people seems like it could/should draw ire. On the other hand, perhaps this would simply give rise to the idea that individuals would have a "copyright credit score" of copyright trustworthiness or something.

I'm curious if this could be challenged at a discrimination level. Multiple corporations acting together to deny equal access to services or something. I don't believe that Internet Access is a right, simply that barring groups of people seems like it could/should draw ire. On the other hand, perhaps this would simply give rise to the idea that individuals would have a "copyright credit score" of copyright trustworthiness or something.

How is it discrimination? A provider is quite within it's rights not to allow its services to be used for illegal activity much like most rental agreements have a clause allowing you to be evicted for conducting criminal activities from the premises.

I'm curious if this could be challenged at a discrimination level. Multiple corporations acting together to deny equal access to services or something. I don't believe that Internet Access is a right, simply that barring groups of people seems like it could/should draw ire. On the other hand, perhaps this would simply give rise to the idea that individuals would have a "copyright credit score" of copyright trustworthiness or something.

How is it discrimination? A provider is quite within it's rights not to allow its services to be used for illegal activity much like most rental agreements have a clause allowing you to be evicted for conducting criminal activities from the premises.

Because extra-judicially and on threadbare evidence they inhibit a person's ability to live to normal standards.

I mean, if you had brown hair, a pornstache, and a Packers baseball cap, would you like it if I got your ability to drive removed/reduced because someone with brown hair, a pornstache, and a packers cap hit my car and drove off? That's about the level of evidence represented by "we have X IP at Y time".

I'm curious if this could be challenged at a discrimination level. Multiple corporations acting together to deny equal access to services or something. I don't believe that Internet Access is a right, simply that barring groups of people seems like it could/should draw ire. On the other hand, perhaps this would simply give rise to the idea that individuals would have a "copyright credit score" of copyright trustworthiness or something.

How is it discrimination? A provider is quite within it's rights not to allow its services to be used for illegal activity much like most rental agreements have a clause allowing you to be evicted for conducting criminal activities from the premises.

ISP should not be forced to decide what is and is not illegal simply from allegations of for profit companies.

Im sorry I trust for-profit motives as far as I can throw them.

Mark my words, this is just the first step into choosing what kinds of information (illegal or not) can and cant be on the internet and id rather choose then having some large entity that doesn't have my interests at heart choosing for me.

I wonder if this is just the ISPs not really wanting to go along with it, and are dragging their feet now that they are in a position where dropping it would be seen as "supporting piracy". Six strikes after all was created as a compromise between the major ISPs and right holders because the ISPs wanted to avoid legislation, especially a 3 strike rule that the music and movie industries were working on around the world. But that threat kind of has disappeared now, since with SOPA and PIPA failing as they did congress is scared to death of anything which would be viewed as "regulating the internet", so it is unlikely no amount of money would be enough for these content industries to pass laws like this they could have got potentially gotten passed this time last year, so fear of regulation is no longer much of a motivation to go along with this. Even though six strikes was truly designed as an educational program with little actual force (as it is designed at the moment at least), the public does view it as being far worse than it is, and no ISP really wants to be viewed as going along with this.

The problem I have with this method is that you must require the prior consent of your subscribers before throttling, or else they will end up in court stating that they did not receive the services they paid for. The argument will be made that the service sold to the subscriber should be pro-rated in any instance of throttling ... which would change the tune of these providers very fast.

I'm curious if this could be challenged at a discrimination level. Multiple corporations acting together to deny equal access to services or something. I don't believe that Internet Access is a right, simply that barring groups of people seems like it could/should draw ire. On the other hand, perhaps this would simply give rise to the idea that individuals would have a "copyright credit score" of copyright trustworthiness or something.

How is it discrimination? A provider is quite within it's rights not to allow its services to be used for illegal activity much like most rental agreements have a clause allowing you to be evicted for conducting criminal activities from the premises.

Because extra-judicially and on threadbare evidence they inhibit a person's ability to live to normal standards.

I mean, if you had brown hair, a pornstache, and a Packers baseball cap, would you like it if I got your ability to drive removed/reduced because someone with brown hair, a pornstache, and a packers cap hit my car and drove off? That's about the level of evidence represented by "we have X IP at Y time".

My ability to drive is a legal issue, governed by actual laws. That's a big difference from several private companies making an agreement among themselves.

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

This needs to be killed, like sopa, pipa, and cispa, not postponed. Especially considering it's a guilty without even having the chance to defend yourself scenario. A mere accusation is enough to get you in trouble. There is more than enough cases where copyright trolls get material completely unjustly pulled when it falls under the fair use guidelines.

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

So if you make efforts to secure your wireless, and war-drivers start making fools of everyone like 4chan wielding LOIC with a hijacked IP in your local neighborhood, you deserve to be punished?

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

So if you make efforts to secure your wireless, and war-drivers start making fools of everyone like 4chan wielding LOIC with a hijacked IP in your local neighborhood, you deserve to be punished?

And with the way the program is set up, in order to even be heard for an unjust accusation, you have to pay 35 bucks. Quite a load of crap when you have to pay just to even offer a defense if you did nothing wrong.

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

So if you make efforts to secure your wireless, and war-drivers start making fools of everyone like 4chan wielding LOIC with a hijacked IP in your local neighborhood, you deserve to be punished?

Well considering you need multiple strikes before you get throttled if you're still getting hacked by that point you're either to stupid to go back to wired for your own safety or you may well be lying about getting hacked. You have to draw a line somewhere.

Sorry, but the alternative is anyone with wireless can do whatever they want online with impunity and when the cops show up "I must have been hacked! It wasn't me!" every damn time. I'm assuming you can see the problem with that scenario....

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

So if you make efforts to secure your wireless, and war-drivers start making fools of everyone like 4chan wielding LOIC with a hijacked IP in your local neighborhood, you deserve to be punished?

Well considering you need multiple strikes before you get throttled if you're still getting hacked by that point you're either to stupid to go back to wired for your own safety or you may well be lying about getting hacked. You have to draw a line somewhere.

Sorry, but the alternative is anyone with wireless can do whatever they want online with impunity and when the cops show up "I must have been hacked! It wasn't me!" every damn time. I'm assuming you can see the problem with that scenario....

The main weakness in current methods of detectingcopyright infringement in BitTorrent appears to be thetreatment of indirect reports as conclusive evidence ofHost type Number of complaintsDesktop machine (1) 5IP Printers (3) 9Wireless AP (1) 4Table 2: False positives for framed addresses.

So, I guess the folks at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Univ. of Washington are also idiots? Idiots who managed to get over 400 copyright complaints when no illicit sharing of any copyrighted data ever transpired. Including multiple notices to the same IP's, even on nonsense devices like printers and wireless access points.

You also ignore that the complaints will be sent via the e-mail provided by the ISP. How many of you out there ever use your ISP provided e-mail account? I never have. How many average users understand the difference between WEP, WPA, WPA2 or any other wireless protection? How many have the knowledge of the above referenced researchers, researchers who managed to be targeted repeatedly for infringement when none took place?

I'm curious if this could be challenged at a discrimination level. Multiple corporations acting together to deny equal access to services or something. I don't believe that Internet Access is a right, simply that barring groups of people seems like it could/should draw ire. On the other hand, perhaps this would simply give rise to the idea that individuals would have a "copyright credit score" of copyright trustworthiness or something.

How is it discrimination? A provider is quite within it's rights not to allow its services to be used for illegal activity much like most rental agreements have a clause allowing you to be evicted for conducting criminal activities from the premises.

I believe that an ISP should have the right to disconnect people using their service for illegal activities. But that is not what is happening here. No one who is going to get letters and throttled and access to some sites cut off and whatever other punitive measures the service providers are going to use will have been found guilty of violating any laws though. That is the problem people have with this system.

There is not judicial oversight, not legal oversight whatsoever. It will be private companies making accusations against users who will have no real way to defend themselves, those accusations will be used by other private companies to deny service to account holders. Is that how you think things should be done in this country? Punitive actions for illegal activity where private rights holders are judge, jury and executioner?

I do not think this is an equitable system and has just as much to do with making consumers afraid to use any web based content services for fear of punitive actions in order to prop up traditional content delivery systems. Time will tell how successful this system is, it will only be as successful as we allow it to be.

For once I was on top of things and didn't procrastinate and signed up for a 12-month term for a BT proxy..

Let this be a lesson to my wife :-)

(at least it was under $30 for 12 months, so I can't really complain all that much..)

You're better off getting a dedicated VPN for pure encrypted traffic.

Or switch over to that-which-can-not-be-said like I did.

Thought about that (which cannot be said), but $2.x/month vs $30-40/month is quite the difference. Also considered a VPN, but it was easier to set up the proxy - less hassle for now..

$40/month isn't that much less than $80-90/month for Uverse + DVR, which was much easier for my wife to use - right now she has to depend on me grabbing her shows. Just easier to torrent them than setting up a PVR and dealing with that, although pretty much every show we watch is available OTA here, so I could if I had the time..

If there's a "cannot be said" with decent limits for $10/month, I'll consider it. One of them was $10 for 10 GB/month - I'd exhaust that in a week, probably.

I'm curious if this could be challenged at a discrimination level. Multiple corporations acting together to deny equal access to services or something. I don't believe that Internet Access is a right, simply that barring groups of people seems like it could/should draw ire. On the other hand, perhaps this would simply give rise to the idea that individuals would have a "copyright credit score" of copyright trustworthiness or something.

How is it discrimination? A provider is quite within it's rights not to allow its services to be used for illegal activity much like most rental agreements have a clause allowing you to be evicted for conducting criminal activities from the premises.

Because extra-judicially and on threadbare evidence they inhibit a person's ability to live to normal standards.

I mean, if you had brown hair, a pornstache, and a Packers baseball cap, would you like it if I got your ability to drive removed/reduced because someone with brown hair, a pornstache, and a packers cap hit my car and drove off? That's about the level of evidence represented by "we have X IP at Y time".

My ability to drive is a legal issue, governed by actual laws. That's a big difference from several private companies making an agreement among themselves.

So? You're saying companies should be able to independently agree to something, enforce it, and leave you holding the bag to prove your innocence?

[/quote]Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.[/quote]Sure, but IPs have been proven to be a weak point of ID (of the account, much less the people using it), and they're being treated as if they're positive. Also, quite a few judges have upheld the idea that you are not, in fact, responsible for other people's actions. It's easier to defend if your wifi is secured, but I don't know if even that is a particular barrier.

For example, I got tagged a while back. I was running a torrent (of Raspbian), but when my ISP got an email saying "IP blah at time blah was torrenting", my ISP saw torrent traffic, and I had to go out of my way to explain that they were wrong. Fortunately, in this case it was a simple process of saying "dude, it's a Debian ISO".

However, by the 6-strikes setup, I would have to pay $35, show up at some time and place spec'ed by the ISP, and then try and prove that I _wasn't_ just legally downloading something. Once I prove I wasn't doing something wrong, is there any penalty for the claimant, or recompense for my wasted time? Nope.

The IP in the claim wasn't at the time mine anyway, as my connection was down during the specified period anyway. This, to me, shows the setup is inherently problematic.

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

So if you make efforts to secure your wireless, and war-drivers start making fools of everyone like 4chan wielding LOIC with a hijacked IP in your local neighborhood, you deserve to be punished?

Well considering you need multiple strikes before you get throttled if you're still getting hacked by that point you're either to stupid to go back to wired for your own safety or you may well be lying about getting hacked. You have to draw a line somewhere.

Sorry, but the alternative is anyone with wireless can do whatever they want online with impunity and when the cops show up "I must have been hacked! It wasn't me!" every damn time. I'm assuming you can see the problem with that scenario....

No, an IP does not equal a guilty person. Even in child pornography cases, the police must do the leg work and prove who actually did the act. An IP address may depending on the totality of circumstances be sufficient to establish probable cause, but it does not equal guilt even in the civil context..

The alternative you pose is a false dilemma. This is not a choice between everyone with a wwireless access point or a shared connection going free, or every account holder being legally responsible.

If the copyright holder wants to pin guilt on someone, he should file a real lawsuit and have all computers in the household seized for forensic inspection. But that wont be cheap, and if the inspection turns up nothing, we are back to square one.

TOR or a VPN will eliminate the tracking, this will only catch the casual downloader

Please don't use Tor, it just clogs up the system that people living in authoritarian third-world regimes need to use to access the entirety of the internet.

Irony. When collusion prevents you from having options, they are using it just for that reason.

The gatekeepers are all running by the same credo, almost as if they're the same company or catering to a sole owner of Internet content. This type of retribution can actually cause financial hardship, and will most likely not function as an effective deterrent. Google is at everyone's fingertips to find out what to do next to circumvent these efforts.

The thing I find fascinating is the Who rather than the what of this system. The participating providers are all old media companies with products that compete with online versions of their primary money making service. Verizon is telephone service, but most of the rest are TV cable companies.

The pure internet companies are largely uninterested.

This implies that the primary purpose of this system is to block competing providers of their services.

However, by the 6-strikes setup, I would have to pay $35, show up at some time and place spec'ed by the ISP, and then try and prove that I _wasn't_ just legally downloading something.

Well, they said "easy-to-use", not free or fair. Neither free nor fair is something these companies ever liked to do, so why would they start now?

Myself, I know what I'm doing - most of the time - but I think I'll sign up my parents and my sister for a VPN service and increase the frequency of rotating their wifi router's password. They'd never intentionally download non-legal stuff, nor are they using BT, but I just don't want them to ever become the targets of some ISP's idiotic hassle.

My ability to drive is a legal issue, governed by actual laws. That's a big difference from several private companies making an agreement among themselves.

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

There are laws regarding breach of contract as well. Private company third parties have no right to cause an ISP to breach their contract with me without showing valid cause (i.e. my having breached it first). Since the "valid cause" in this case is this non-involved third party saying "we say they did it".

In an unbiased court evaluation of the inevitable clauses in ISP agreements that will support this, they would be struck down as inequitable.

I think some of this might also depend on the state in which you live. For example, where I live it would be illegal for them to charge me to contest their detection. There is also something about a third party interaction in a two party contract (between user and the ISP) that is illegal as well where I live, i'm still looking into that but... this is what I have so far after speaking with an attorney friend and as I understand it basically right now - This is a "third paty" agreement/contract that is established "in secret" between the ISP and another entity, not the user and the ISP, the user is not permitted the details of this agreement and is not allowed to participate in making the agreement or negoitation for the agreement, such "third party" agreements are generally illegal (where I live) and can't be included in, or considered for or as part of, or interact with, the agreement between the user and the ISP for service.

Most agreements state you are responsible for activity on your account. That means they're covered if they kill your account for copyright infringement but it was your kid or roommate who actually did it. It's on you to control who does what on your account.

So if you make efforts to secure your wireless, and war-drivers start making fools of everyone like 4chan wielding LOIC with a hijacked IP in your local neighborhood, you deserve to be punished?

Well considering you need multiple strikes before you get throttled if you're still getting hacked by that point you're either to stupid to go back to wired for your own safety or you may well be lying about getting hacked. You have to draw a line somewhere.

Sorry, but the alternative is anyone with wireless can do whatever they want online with impunity and when the cops show up "I must have been hacked! It wasn't me!" every damn time. I'm assuming you can see the problem with that scenario....

The main weakness in current methods of detectingcopyright infringement in BitTorrent appears to be thetreatment of indirect reports as conclusive evidence ofHost type Number of complaintsDesktop machine (1) 5IP Printers (3) 9Wireless AP (1) 4Table 2: False positives for framed addresses.

So, I guess the folks at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Univ. of Washington are also idiots? Idiots who managed to get over 400 copyright complaints when no illicit sharing of any copyrighted data ever transpired. Including multiple notices to the same IP's, even on nonsense devices like printers and wireless access points.

You also ignore that the complaints will be sent via the e-mail provided by the ISP. How many of you out there ever use your ISP provided e-mail account? I never have. How many average users understand the difference between WEP, WPA, WPA2 or any other wireless protection? How many have the knowledge of the above referenced researchers, researchers who managed to be targeted repeatedly for infringement when none took place?

Thank you. This post changed my mind from "Maybe this could work and be fair, after all 6 is a lot", to "This is moronic".

I'm guessing this will mean ISPs need to provide better security as standard in any supplied routers? after all, it's been pointed out most people don't understand the different protocols (or even know they exist). If I set up my router as my ISP tells me to I expect it to conform to their expected security levels. If it doesn't surely it's their fault for supplying equipment that doesn't meet their own prescribed standards?

Why are you guys even bothering with BT proxies to begin with? They are not just limiting this to monitoring bit torrent. What do you think all that deep packet inspection equipment is for at the ISP's? Do you really think all that equipment is going to just go to waste and not be used? Do you seriously think the ISP is not going to be watching also? Do you seriously not think that somewhere in this agreement with ISP's is something that makes the ISP's an active monitoring and reporting part of all this? All you have seen presented about this is what they want you to know about, not everything involved. The ISP can still see it if it arrives or leaves your computer via your connection, a proxy doesn't help with that at all.

Why are you guys even bothering with BT proxies to begin with? They are not just limiting this to monitoring bit torrent. What do you think all that deep packet inspection equipment is for at the ISP's? Do you really think all that equipment is going to just go to waste and not be used? Do you seriously think the ISP is not going to be watching also? Do you seriously not think that somewhere in this agreement with ISP's is something that makes the ISP's an active monitoring and reporting part of all this? All you have seen presented about this is what they want you to know about, not everything involved. The ISP can still see it if it arrives or leaves your computer via your connection, a proxy doesn't help with that at all.

That's quite a few assumptions without a shred of evidence to back any of it up. DPI isn't cheap. There is a cost in real dollars, equipment space, and bandwidth overhead. There is also the issue that it may open up ISP's to liability because they are actively monitoring connections. Checking what protocols a user is sending/receiving is a far cry from full DPI.

There is also the issue that many so called Bit Torrent proxy's are acting more and more like VPN's by offering tunneled encryption between themselves and the end user. There are lists as to what proxy and VPN services offer both end to end encryption and either don't keep or can't keep IP logs.

The problem with printers getting DMCA'd has been fixed; they only give you a strike if you're actually torrenting. Also, six strikes doesn't use DPI. ISPs may or may not have varying amounts of DPI installed, but there's really no public information on what it's being used for.